Recording and reproducing of magnetic recording apparatus for video recorder and computer are generally performed by sliding a magnetic head and a magnetic tape in contact each other. At this time, if the shavings of the magnetic tape and the dusts on the periphery of the recording apparatus are adhered to the surface of the magnetic head, reproduction output lowers and output cannot be obtained at all in the end. For recovering the reproduction output lowered in such a way, a cleaning tape restoring the reproduction output by cleaning the dirt adhered on the surface of the magnetic head is used (e.g., refer to JP-A-6-139531, JP-A-2003-281706, JP-A-2004-95182 and JP-A-2002-230727).
On the other hand, magnetic recording becomes more and more higher density, and so it is difficult to accomplish satisfactory recording and reproduction if the tip of a magnetic head and a magnetic tape are not in contact well with each other. For maintaining good head touch, a cleaning tape is required not only to clean a magnetic head of dirt but also to adjust the form of the head to a certain degree. In particular, a magnetic head for high density recording of the shortest recording wavelength of 1 μm or less is used in recent years, therefore a trace of dirt on the head will interfere with recording and reproducing performance.
With the progress of the increase of recording density, the materials of magnetic head have been changing from the former ferrite to hard metal such as Sendust, and further in recent years to a magneto-resistance effect type (MR) element using Permalloy low in hardness as the material. Further, a pointed head tip as used in helical scan has been conventionally used, but in the case of a linear tape, a flat head that touches the whole breadth of a tape is coming to be used. The head comprises highly hard ceramics having minute depression of a depth of several ten nanometers or so, and an MR element is inserted in the depression.
For uniformly and efficiently cleaning such an MR head for use in high density magnetic recording, it is required that a cleaning tape uniformly touches the tape sliding surface of an MR head, the surface of the MR element inserted in the minute depression must be cleaned, and a cleaning tape has appropriate abrading force so as not to abrade the soft MR element.
As cleaning tapes of LTO system, unused data-recording tapes have been conventionally diverted, but the surfaces of data-recording tapes are too smooth, so that cleaning operation must be repeated several times to remove persistent dirt, and it has been difficult to remove the dirt on the surface of an MR element. Further, since the tape irregularly touches the sliding surface of a flat head, cleaning results in unevenness.